Local officials say solving arson requires exhaustive detective work

Local fire chiefs are hoping to draw on the knowledge and resources of state fire investigators to solve several suspected arsons in the region.

By Justin Graeber

The Enterprise, Brockton, MA

By Justin Graeber

Posted Nov. 28, 2012 at 12:01 AM
Updated Nov 28, 2012 at 12:34 PM

By Justin Graeber

Posted Nov. 28, 2012 at 12:01 AM
Updated Nov 28, 2012 at 12:34 PM

HANSON

» Social News

As the smoke cleared and the last of the cinders sizzled out, state police with dogs crawled through the burned wreckage of the former Carriage House restaurant in Easton.

The dogs were K-9 units from the state fire marshal’s office, trained to sniff out accelerants. The fire on Nov. 13 was intentionally set, officials said.

It was one of a series of suspicious fires recently in empty buildings in the region, including a warehouse in Hanson on Tuesday, two buildings in Plympton and Halifax on Monday and a house in Middleboro on Thanksgiving.

Now, local fire chiefs are hoping to draw on the knowledge and resources of state fire investigators to solve these crimes.

Fire investigations are, like all detective work, steeped in deductive reasoning. Investigators work backwards, said Jennifer Meith of the state fire marshal’s office, eliminating all possible accidental causes of a fire before determining a blaze has been set.

“The first thing we need to do is determine the cause of the fire, and suspicious is not a cause,” Meith said.

In Easton, for example, said Fire Chief Kevin Partridge, authorities determined there were no utilities to the building, the building was secure, and the blaze started in the middle of the night.

“There’s no normal factors” to trigger the fire, Partridge said.

Investigators try to locate the spot where a fire started, which can also yield clues to the cause. Witness testimony is also a great help in investigating suspicious fires, Meith said.

“Is (the evidence) matching up with stories people are telling them? They’re going to use all of that information to determine what they call the cause and source of origin,” she said.

Local fire chiefs have ultimate authority over arson investigations, but they often call in the state fire marshal’s office, whose investigators are state police officers specially trained in arson detection.

Easton’s Partridge said he will handle an investigation internally if a fire is clearly an accident. However, he will often draw on the resources of the marshal’s office, even if a fire isn’t arson.

Partridge and one of his captains have taken the basic fire investigators course – the captain is currently working on the second-tier certification – but he said the state offers resources, like the accelerant-detecting dogs, a small town simply doesn’t have.

Bridgewater had one of the highest rates of arson in the state in 2010, according to data from the fire marshal, four arsons in a town of 26,500 people. No other Brockton area towns are on the list.

Only about 3 percent of the 29,110 fires reported in Massachusetts were intentionally set, according to 2011 statistics from the fire marshal’s office.

Page 2 of 2 - Arson is becoming less frequent in Massachusetts. Arson in buildings has been trending downward in recent years – it was down 17 percent from 2010 to 2012. Motor vehicle arson went up slightly in the same period, 8 percent, but the overall trend is still that arsons in the state have drastically decreased in the last 20 years.